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Put Pen to Paper Marathon 2019 Week 34

The Marathon journey is in its third year. Put Pen to Paper is the current incarnation.

On August 21 I tried out a new location. Having visited Bryn Mawr College a couple of weeks ago, where I went to college quite a few years in the past (!), I decided to try working in the Canaday Library there for this week’s Marathon session.

I’m familiar with the library, of course, and it looks very much as it did when I was in school here. The furniture is the same, and I was assigned a study carrel like these in the photo when I was a senior – it was a senior class privilege to have your own space and to be able to leave your books and work in place.

I set up on the second floor in the stacks at a table.

On this day I worked on finishing up the poems I mentioned last week, a group of people portraits I have collected. There were a number of them and it’s taken some time to get them into shapes that pleased me. Some of them were not much more than note-taking in their original form and needed a lot of help. I was able to accomplish this work and I felt happy about how they turned out.

I went out into the sunshine after completing this phase of my work today. Here are some shots of the campus:

I ate lunch outside in this little resting spot. I lived in the dorm in the background for my last two years at school. This garden was not here then but I am glad it is now. Very pleasant being outside on this warm summer day.

After lunch I came home and finished up with Little Vines.

I have caught up with all my outstanding poems and next week I can look to filling the clean slate that I now have in front of me, poetry-wise. I’m ready to be moving on.

Here are some samples of my work today.

This man came to my house in July and got rid of the yellow jackets living in our BBQ grill.

Removal Man

I can’t be talking on the phoneI’m busy hunting some bees
snaps the pest control man
pepper in his voice
an ancient small dark-skinned man
bald and wearing a hearing aid
his white shirt and navy pants uniform
fresh like it just came off the ironing board
and a size too large on his wiry-thin body.

This agent of mass stinging-insect destruction
cuts off the call. Stows his way-out-of-date flip phone:The office won’t leave me alone. Won’t leave me alone.
It’s all grief to him. He does not have time.
Stomps off to the back yard
deletes the yellow jackets Two nests of them
who never saw him coming
Hands me the invoice and gone
whirling down the street.
I am still standing on the porch.
His force field has not yet let go of me.

7/25/19
8/21/19

Here is a tanka about my experience being in this library again after so many years.

2.
Never sensed a ghost
before today and maybe
never will again
but today I can hardly
make my way among the crowd

Little Vines. I’ve included all of them I did today – I was not in the frame of mind to make choices.

a.
the needle
gave the ripped shirt
the closure it was looking for

b.
I give hugs to everyone
it doesn’t seem practical
to keep them in storage

c.
two zeroes
after hours
exhausted from holding place values all day

d.
the woman in the photo
marine and cautious
I’d say you surprised a mermaid there all right

e.
oh and I know she’s telling the truth
she spilled
like a dropped bag of flour

f.
no disco ball
no spectators
no momentum

g.
if you ask me
really it’s the tulips
that make the difference

h.
my mom does the laundry
the cerises and the ceruleans and the cyans
in this dank basement

i.
sold out
the new guy
but he was agile and got over the fence in time

j.
your introduction to
that dynamic new electric fence in town
was it gradual or one blinding flash

k.
An unfair advantage
dressed in a cool outfit
Strip it naked and you get plain old cheating

l.
the new moon
hiding behind the scratch-outs of blue ink
on the notebook page

m.
an unlucky flip of a coin two years ago
a platinum wedding band
thrown in the ocean today

n.
the trellis of yellow roses
props up the back wall
of the honeymoon cottage

o.
so sensitive so apprehensive
the vegan fork called in to work
at a pork barbeque

p.
cue the classic
yellow retro
footloose groove

q.
in my circle of friends
a flutter of odd behavior
is appreciated

r.
dry up the fake tears
no one believes you hoped he’d pull through
let’s get back to the reading of the will

s.
stranger you entered my house
brought your own poison with you
stabbed me in the back of the neck
and you wonder why I slapped you to death

t.
up late yet another night
enduring a moonlit hallucination
my night’s sleep
peeled right down the middle

u.
the phases of the moon
the aspirin cut in segments
the pearls that scatter on the floor

v.
nobody answered the door
at the mermaid’s house
not that it matters because
there is no such thing as a mermaid

Your removal man is just the kind I appreciate to do work for me, someone who means business and takes care of it.
The vines made me smile as usual. Hard to pick one, but the last one is perfect for my present state of mind. (K)

The old campus has a familiar style of architecture…the clock tower for example. Great portrait of the exterminator and his force field. Had to laugh at the idea of keeping hugs in storage and that poor vegan fork!

Thank you. Bryn Mawr was founded in the 1880’s and the center of the campus reflects that era. The tower building has a bell that each senior rings when she has taken her last final exam; I think of that when I see that tower. And hugs need to be used or they might go stale? Deflate? I don’t know but let’s pass them out. And the vegan fork, don’t know where that came from, my eye picked up the word fork and this one just fell right out of the sky on to the paper!